Last Thursday was Shane’s birthday and he’d arranged a ride on his old home turf; Edale. As part of his present Irwin had got him some new ‘aerodynamic’ bar ends (word on the track is Gwin will be running them at the Worlds) and plastic spokey dokies (personally, I was disappointed he hadn’t got anodised aluminium ones, but apparently they don’t exist!).

We then headed up the ridge towards Mam Tor and down the bridleway that traverses the back of Mam Tor to the top of Mam Tor -> Greenlands bridleway and then down that. It’s is holding up pretty well from when we worked on it two years ago and is still great fun.

Shane completed his compulsory actions check-list that he uses for all rides we go on:

Get puncture √

Chase sheep √

Crash √

Rip shorts in an embarrassing place √

Unfortunately he missed out on top marks, by not using his catch phrase. An honourable stupidity mention also goes to Nat, for riding into a ditch on the way back down the road.

All in all it was a great evening of riding in the sun, topped off with a pint and chip butties at The Rambler Inn in Edale. – Shane needs to have a birthday more often!

Here’s a little summary of our recent rides over the snow Christmas 09 period. With a video with footage left over from two rides from the latter part of 2009.

24th Dec 09 – I (Jeff) went out for some Christmas Eve riding on Win Hill, with the group of young people collectively know as ‘The Kids’ (this name could stick til they’re well into their 30’s). There was a reasonable depth of snow at that height and we sessioned a corner, with mixed results – some slid like a squid, while others went down like a clown (editors note Jeff wrote this bit!). We also went up and rode the root section below the steps – knowing where all the roots are here pays off. 😀 It was signification colder at that level, once out of the woods, so it wasn’t long before we headed home.

09-12-24 WinHill JK+The Kids, 16 Pictures by Jeff

26th Dec 09 – The Epic Christmas ride was even more epic than normal! With a serious amount of snow even at lower levels the full epic route was going to be a serious challenge. But we (James), Shane, Jeff set off with that route in mind. It soon become obvious that we might have to rethink the route! Although the snow made for a very picture perfect December calendar shot. It wasn’t so great for riding in with the up hills being rather tricking epically once we had made it up onto the western side of Win Hill where the drifts were even deeper meaning that pushing and carrying your bike were the only options in places. Once we reached the ridge we had hoped that the gradient might be enough to all us to ride the bikes. We headed off down the ridge just about staying on the bikes. After stopping off to test how deep the snow was in some of the bomb holes (answer very deep). We carried on down towards hope cross. Where the snow had completely filled in the bridleway approaching the the start of the Hope Cross bridleway. So although it was rather nice to continue the tradition of a Christmas ride we might have been better heading out on the sledges or just making a Giant snow man somewhere!See the the footage from this ride in the second half of the video at the bottom.

31st Dec 09 – After the rather disappointing Christmas ride (in terms of riding) myself and Jeff decided that we would head up to Hope Cross to do some riding. With the Trees around this rocky bridleway providing some welcome shelter from the still snowy conditions still effecting most parts we thought we would be onto a winner. I (James) was eager to test out the full capabilities of my new Transition Bank. The idea behind the build was to create a all purpose bike that i could ride down the pump track, take to Bolehills, ride some longer epic rides on and still be able to enjoy the downs on. And so far i think it easily covers the job! With both myself also taking our cameras there was a fair amount of pictures taken on various parts of the track.

09-12-31 HopeX DH JI+JK, 22 Pictures by Irwin & Jeff

21st July 09 – On a damp Tuesday evening we (Irwin, Shane & Jeff) headed out after work to ride some of the Hollins Cross and Mam Tor bridleways, which are great for short rides as you can park at the top of the hill and don’t have to ride far to get to some pretty good tracks. Shane was on his first outing with his new SPDs (that magical invention that lets you attach yourself to the bike so you don’t need to be as fit when climbing hills 😉 ). It wasn’t long before the inevitable and he stopped but didn’t manage to unclip, fortunately (for Shane) Irwin was stood next to him and made a good temporary leaning post.
We rode the top section of Hollins Cross – BackTor Bridge and first section of Hollins Cross – Greenlands. Shane manage to get two punchers – one on each bridleway (the second in exactly the same spot as a previous ride), probably caused by a bad mix of XC single ply tyres and his DH riding style. While fixing the second puncture we decided it would be more fun to head back up the ridge and ride the short descent that goes around the side of Mam Tor. We weren’t wrong! With the previous rain it was quite slippy and muddy in places, this made for a great final run, with water flying everywhere and sketchy moments had by all.See the the footage from this ride in the first half of the video below.

Back at the start of August James, Matt (Ashmore) and me (Jeff) went over to Edale with the intention of riding and filming Jacob’s Ladder. After an impressively (for us) continuous ride up there, from parking area at the bottom, we got to the Ladder where we discovered Irwin’s brakes weren’t doing much following his visit to Morzine. So with filming that track out the window we carried on to the top, putting the bags down on the flat middle section, we added to the length by going up the footpath on the right, giving us a 100m run in to the left hander into the initial gully. It was a good run with some water slashing in various places where it was following the track. I caught Matt up as he hadn’t been riding for a while and overtook him on the flat section. We picked up the bags and then did the section below the gate, it was tiring and my brake levers were too far out.

After that we headed back down to the car before going to the most excellent pub in Edale (possibly even the Valley), The Nag’s Head, and there was a comedy moment where I rode off ahead with Matt’s car keys in my pocket before realising and going back. We happened to bump into Shane 😆 and had a rather nice plate of chips and onion rings with a side dish of banter, followed by a generous amount of chocolate cake courtesy of Shane’s missus, cheers 😀 .

Following a lesson in trials riding from the ProMaster we drove up to Mam Tor, leaving Shane to his work. We rode down to Hollins Cross, with Irwin’s brakes improving somewhat we filmed on the bridleway that goes down to Greenlands, before a final sweaty push back up to the car. The weather was good and I got funny shaped sunburn where my arm pads weren’t covering.

On Friday Irwin and I rode the Pump Track in Bamford, it wasn’t too wet considering the weather of recent, an extra line has been added coming off the far berm and we did a bit maintenance on the far inner berm. We then had a competition that involved the middle line into the mini PT berm and then rolling as far up the bank as possible, I won, possibly due to a controversial wheelbase size advantage. Following that we took pictures on the mini PT berm.

I’ve been out riding various DH routes recently, but not really had much time to write about them (or made the effort), so heres a round up of the last four rides featuring the current four ‘usual suspects’.

21st April, Chapel Gate
Nicky and I parked at the back of Mam Tor and sessioned the bridleway there for a while before riding along Rushup Edge to reach Chapel Gate, somewhere I’d never ridden (although Nicky had probably ridden it once years ago, like everywhere else), I knew it was rocky but I was still surprised how rocky, it was still good fun tho and we got some nice shots. 08-04-21 Chapel Gate NB+JK, 13 Pictures

6th May, Jacob’s Ladder, Edale
I got a lift over to Edale with Ben and we parked at Shane’s pub, before a fair distance of road (and ‘road’) riding to get to Jacob’s Ladder, we decided to walk and carry our bikes up the steeper but shorter footpath to the main corner. The name ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ originates from the Bible where a guy called Jacob saw in a dream a stairway (or ladder) leading from Earth up to Heaven. It certainly felt like it was going to Heaven by the time we’d got near the top, especially with all my camera gear. On the subject of which I later realised I hadn’t brought any discs for my camcorder, nuts! So this let concentrating on pictures, which worked out quite well.

Ben was on his first outing on his ‘new’ Kona Stab which had all sorts of randomly sourced parts on it, having previously been on a much lighter XC full-sus Rocky Mountain, he soon found the joys of riding the more tech rocky lines rather than taking the smoothest line. We pushed all the way to the top and got a few pictures on the first straight, and then Shane found a drop off a drainage feature. We did a helmet cam train on the way down, and all had fairly good runs. Then back to Shane’s pub (The Nag’s Head, Edale) and enjoyed a pint and review of the footage and pictures before heading home.

08-05-06 Jacobs Ladder Shane+Ben+JK, 30 Pictures

12th May, WinHill
Nicky, Ben and I met up for some riding on WinHill, we spent the whole time riding as the tracks were riding that well, so we only took a few pictures on our last descent, and after processing they have been rationed to one per person. On the way home I had the weird experience of a bat brushing across my shoulder!, I kept my head down after that.

13th May, HopeX-DH
I met Shane as I ascended the bridleway out of Aston as he’d had time and energy to spare and rode down to meet me. We pushed up, then rode down the ridge and then into the woods at the top of HopeX-DH, no sooner than we closed the gate Nicky appeared pushing up, “I love it when a plan comes together” 😀 . We sectioned the track filming each other, moving fast to keep the light, and got pretty much the whole track. Nicky then left us and Shane and I pushed back up to the first corner where I pulled the stills camera out, and inevitably the flash too as it was too dark for natural light, and we mastered a line with a nice rock jump at the end of it. As it got dark we returned up the ridge and then down the Aston bridleway. I nearly hit a rabbit on the road down from Aston, good job it moved otherwise I would have had to bunny hop it! 😆 😀 ( …and I can’t bunny hop 🙁 ).

08-05-13 HopeX-DH Shane+JK, 7 Pictures

Hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, and if you ever think we’re being lazy and not putting up any content remember to check out the gallery cos we’re probably put up pictures and not written any words to go with them (the story of my education…). Anyway I’m riding tomorrow night, o and Friday night, so I need some sleep now.

In conclusion, the tracks and weather are great for evening rides at the moment, so get out there and ride!!!

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